The Power of Optimism and Hope – Conversation with Itzkan, Thidemann, and Codur

Featured: Seth Itzkan, Karl Thidemann, and Anne-Marie Codur

Interviewed by: Hannah Uebele

Seth Itzkan wants you to be optimistic about planet Earth’s environmental future.

In a time where climate change and its severe effects seem to declare doom and gloom constantly on the news, the reason for his positivity isn’t because the Earth isn’t in danger, but because we still have the ability to save it.

As a graduate of the Tufts College of Engineering and the University of Houston Masters of Science Program in Studies of the Future, Itzkan advocates for soil restoration as a climate mitigation solution through the non-profit Soil4Climate which he both Co-founds and Co-directs.

Itzkan, and his fellow Co-founder and Co-director Karl Thidemann, believe in interdisciplinary collaboration and the use of music, poetry, and art to also reach audiences about the issues they advocate for.

“It’s important to have a positive thinking and so to help create positive thinking we wrote a song,” Itzkan said. (https://youtu.be/CZfnDpPR-tg?list=PLiUvc4BbU6pyyWHfIPwkDhRMlshTGoLRT)

Thidemann also has written poetry about the climate to further advocate through different platforms.

Thidemann explained how he had no idea when he was starting out that his career would’ve ended up the way it has.

“I studied Environmental Chemistry at Wesleyan – I never imaged I was going to be working with farmers,” Thidemann said.

“I had worked at an environmental lab for a number of years, I taught high school and math, I worked at a lab that was mostly testing for hazardous waste, and then later I sold electric cars for ten years. Which again, I had never imagined for the life of me that I would be selling electric cars but through that I ended up giving quite a few talks including here at Tufts,” he said.

Thidemann explained how he learned about carbon in the air through his work with electric cars, but that it wasn’t until he started working with Itzhan that he realized the huge potential for capturing atmospheric carbon in the ground through regenerative land practices.

Thidemann stressed the importance of effective science communication to raise awareness about these practices.

“I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is so obvious, why isn’t everyone talking about this?’ So there’s a huge and very important role in science communications,” Thidemann said.

Thidemann also explained how many people from different fields of study and interests can and should come together to work on this issue.

“They all have to, it’s part of the holistic framework, trying to look at the economic, environmental, and social factors to help make decision,” Thidemann said.

Dr. Anne-Marie Codur, a research fellow at the Global Development and Environment Institute (GDAE) at Tufts University further emphasized the importance of interdisciplinary research, as displayed by her own career.

“I have a Ph.D from France in development and environmental economics, so it was a very multi-disciplinary Ph.D, and I came here many years ago when I was a post-doc at Harvard, and then this is when I met the team here. I really was looking for economists who were unorthodox, really out of the box and looking at the connection with environmental issues and social issues. I was also interested in being really involved in civil society, so for many years I left academia to be in a nonprofit organization which I cofounded about education for peace. I also gave programs on environmental policies and then I came back to academia. So now I am acutally only part time at GDAE, and I’m also a climate activist,” Codur said.

Codur explained how its hard to give career advice to current students since a lot of life is uncontrollable and up to luck, but she emphasized that that students need to have passion for what they pursue in order to be successful.

“I didn’t really have a career plan, I really followed my heart. In a way you have to be open for surprises, you cannot control life. That’s the main idea I would give to students, don’t think you can control (life) from now on,” Codur said.

“(As for career advice) you really need to feel that this is a passion, it’s something that you really want to contribute to. Don’t do it for the wrong motivations. Don’t do it for the fame or the power or the money or any of that because it will fail. If you do it for the passion you might not succeed but you will be in for an amazing ride and you will learn so much and you will grow so much,” Codur said.

Codur, like Itzkan and Thidemann, is also a proponent for using the arts to communicate these issues to the public.

“I’m an artist, I’m also a singer, so I like the fact that they wrote a song about that. I really belive in that intersection and I think that is what we need to do,” Codur said.

Codur, like Itzkan, described how she is very optimistic and hopeful for the future, and that current students, and in fact anyone, should not be discouraged and must continue to have hope.

“There is tremendous hope, because yes there are crises everywhere, yes everything is going to to collapse, but it’s a good thing actually, we can recreate the whole human adventure. How about that for a start?” Codur said.